


No Grit, No Pearl

by AudreyV



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Backstory, Bonnie gets put through hell, Cheating, Coercion, Dark, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Infidelity, Lesbian Sex, Past Sexual Abuse, Pre-Canon, Revenge, but she comes out the other side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyV/pseuds/AudreyV
Summary: A thin cord snapped and pearls scattered across the hardwood floor.  Her eyes followed one as it rolled toward the doorway and came to rest at Sam Keating's feet.  
Bonnie wasn’t the kind of woman who let herself be ravished within sight of an open door, especially by a married woman whose husband’s whereabouts were unknown.  Yet there she was, perched on the edge of her own desk with her skirt around her waist, just as ruined as her necklace.
There would be fallout from this, but the choice had already been made.  Either she’d survive it or she wouldn’t.  
Years later, Bonnie would wonder if she’d paid too dear a cost for that one moment with the woman she adored.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well. This new season, right? I have every one of my fingers and toes crossed that Bonnie's not under the sheet.
> 
> This is Bonnalise in spirit, but the majority of the fic explores the screwed-up situation Bonnie ends up in with Sam. So be warned. 
> 
> I went into writing this with an image of a pearl necklace breaking, pearls scattering everywhere. It grew into a dark, uncomfortable story in which Sam Keating isn't just the usual bag of dicks, but also a deeply flawed human being. And Bonnie is both a victim of the machinations of the Keating family fuckery, and an active participant in her own misery. 
> 
> It's that last part that gave me pause about posting this. I've had this fic sitting, pretty much finished, for months, because if I squint I can see how problematic that idea is. 
> 
> At its core, this story is about Bonnie growing as a person and starting to exercise control over her life. I adore that resilient, tenacious, serious little blonde who tends to make questionable choices but still deserves all the happiness ever.

At the time, she had no precognition, no crystal ball or psychic hotline to tell her how terribly off course things would go. In the moment, all Bonnie knew was that Annalise Keating, the most brilliant, magnetic, alluring woman she’d ever met, was standing a breath too close, offering to kiss her. 

No, not offering. She was *asking permission* to kiss her. Annalise *wanted* to kiss her, and maybe wanted to do more than just kiss her. The mere suggestion sent a cascade of shivers through Bonnie in the second before she replied, “Oh, god, yes.”

Years later, she’d wonder if she’d paid too dear a cost for that one moment with the woman she adored. Perhaps all that came after could have been avoided if she’d had the moral fortitude to ignore the way her heart fluttered when Annalise posed the question. 

Bonnie wasn’t the kind of woman who let herself be ravished within sight of an open door, especially by a married woman whose husband’s whereabouts were unknown. Yet there she was, perched on the edge of her own desk with her skirt around her waist, Annalise’s fingers deftly stroking her. 

If she could have seen the future, she might not have said “yes” so quickly, but years later when Bonnie remembered the feel of teeth on her earlobe and Annalise’s free hand on her jaw holding her still, she knew the answer would have been the same. 

She was close, so close, when the hand on her face slid down her neck. She’d recently started wearing a single strand of pearls that made her feel elegant and very grown-up. At 29, Bonnie had no budget for real pearls, so her necklace was just inexpensive glass ones, bought in a charity shop. When Annalise’s fingers caught on it, the slight pressure was enough to snap the cord and send them clattering all over the floor of the office. 

“Forget that,” Annalise mumbled, kissing her now-bare neck. 

She didn’t know that Bonnie’s eyes had followed a few of the pearls as they rolled toward the office door, where they came to a stop at Sam Keating’s feet. 

Sam stood frozen just outside the door to the office. Although Annalise's fully-clothed body blocked much of his view, there was no innocent explanation possible for their position. Bonnie was sure Sam could see her underwear discarded on the floor, her arms and legs wrapped lewdly around his wife, everything from her messy hair to her flushed cheeks screaming out her trespasses. 

Their eyes met and Bonnie held her breath. She was certain that Sam would explode with rage, but he didn't. He just stood there with his coat on and his leather satchel slung across his shoulder, watching them— no, Bonnie realized, just her— with a curious expression on his face. 

By then Bonnie was as ruined as her necklace; she would lose the job she loved, the sense of belonging she’d found in the Keating house, the progress she’d made with Sam’s help as her therapist. She’d lose the woman in her arms. 

All she had was the moment, so in an uncharacteristic moment of self-kindness, Bonnie let herself enjoy it. 

She closed her eyes as she felt herself starting to come apart, and she kept them tightly shut as the rush abated. She knew that opening them would be the beginning of the end. She needed to put off the inevitable disaster as long as she could. 

When Bonnie finally made herself look at the doorway, there was no one there. Either Sam had left without a word or her eyes had been playing tricks on her. 

“It’s late. You should go."

"Of course," the blonde agreed, kneeling down to gather the scattered pearls. Annalise came over to her and tipped her chin up. 

“Leave them. I’ll get you a new one. A proper one, knotted, so that won’t happen next time.”

Bonnie’s stomach clenched at the implication of the words. She remembered Sam’s eyes as he stood at the door (but had he been there at all or was she crazier than she even knew?) She imagined what he’d see if he walked in for real— Annalise in her perfectly fitted plum dress, calmly smiling down at her, and flushed, breathless Bonnie on her hands and knees, surrounded by the pieces of her broken necklace. 

There would be fallout from this, but the choice had already been made. Either she’d survive it or she wouldn’t. Bonnie let the pearls drop from her hand. 

The next morning, she ran into Sam in the kitchen. He made small talk with her, asking if she’d been keeping up with the journaling he’d recommended. It was as if nothing had changed. Bonnie relaxed, relieved that his ghost’s appearance at the office door had been a trick of her guilty imagination. 

That relief shattered a week later. Bonnie was sitting at her desk, deeply absorbed in a draft of the brief she was working on when Sam came up behind her. He leaned over her, gently placing something small on her desk. 

A pearl. 

One look at Sam’s face and she knew they were ruined. 

“Sam…”

“Save it, Bon. I don’t feel like getting lied to right now.”

Bonnie nodded, grasping the pearl between her fingers and folding it into her palm. “I’ll pack up my things and go.”

“Annie’s not even worth fighting for?”

“You know that’s not true.” A sigh. “It was out of line— wrong— for me to do what I did. I could try to rationalize it, but what it comes down to is that the possibility of you being hurt by it didn’t occur to me until after. I never set out to hurt you. But I did, and leaving is the only way I know to say I’m sorry.” Bonnie pulled a few things from her desk and put them in her bag. She could feel Sam’s eyes on her for a long time before he spoke. 

“You’re not the first one, you know.”

“I didn’t think I was.”

“You’re just the worst.”

Bonnie didn’t understand, looked at Sam with the question written all over his face until he sighed and continued.

“I told her a couple of weeks ago that I thought you had a crush on me. It’s a thing that happens a lot between patients and therapists, the therapist is someone who is safe for… ”

Suddenly Bonnie understood why Annalise had wanted her. Annalise chose her to prove a point. The thought that Bonnie might have wanted Sam was enough to provoke her into asserting her dominance, her ownership. The idea was disgusting, and Bonnie tried to press it out, but it lingered. She closed her eyes and replayed the echoes of her pearls clattering on the floor. She felt used. 

“Well, I misinterpreted those cues, apparently.” Sam said quietly. 

“Not… entirely.” The words were soft and small and Bonnie wasn’t even sure that they came out in her voice, but she thought they were probably true. “You want me… like that?”

An exhalation, defeat. “Yeah.”

“Then kiss me.”

It was the worst possible thing she could have said, and the worst idea, and they shouldn’t have, but before she could rethink the offer, Sam was tipping her chin up and gently pressing his lips to hers.

It wasn’t anything like kissing Annalise, and Bonnie couldn’t imagine how two people as radically different as Sam and Annalise could find a compromise in the way they kissed each other. 

Sam kissed her reverently. He went slow, as if she’d never done it before. Like any sudden movement might scare her off, like she was a small bird instead of a grown woman. 

He fucked her like she was made of glass, slow and controlled as if he expected her to fall to pieces at any moment. He kissed her neck, stroked her hair, kept checking in to make sure she was okay. He was trying to make her feel safe, she realized. (As if anything that happened in that godforsaken house ever felt safe. As if what she wanted was to feel safe.) 

She imagined Annalise appearing in the doorway. With her eyes closed, even as Sam moved inside her Bonnie thought of his wife, pictured the shock and anger on her face as she watched them. 

Then again, it was Annalise, and Annalise was never predictable. It was just as likely that her expression would be smug, self-satisfied. Turned on. 

Flat on her back with Sam moving delicately on top of her, Bonnie let her mind wander to somewhere quite different. She imagined Sam fucking her from behind while she buried her face in Annalise’s cunt. His hand would be on the back of her neck, holding her there firmly as Annalise writhed under her. 

Annalise would come first, then pull Bonnie up to kiss her. She’d slip a hand down and her fingers would circle Bonnie’s clit, applying just the right amount of pressure to make her come, make her body clench and stammer around Sam’s cock. 

Even in Bonnie’s fantasy, it was clear to her that they were just using her. But at least trapped between their bodies, she’d know it was happening. She wouldn’t be a foolish girl getting fucked on her desk, thinking that it had anything to do with her at all. 

When it was over, Bonnie felt an odd distance as she watched Sam tuck his shirt into his pants. She supposed he was handsome. There were probably women— co-workers at the university, or even students— who’d be thrilled to have him touch them. She tried to feel lucky, but her body was tense and all she felt was empty. 

“Thank you.” He kissed her and she made herself relax into it. “Our secret?” he asked quietly. 

Bonnie nodded, and then Sam left. She watched until he turned the corner, smoothing her dress with nervous hands. 

Bonnie splashed water on her face in the hall bathroom, reapplied her lipstick, then tried to get back to work. An hour later she hadn't read more than a few sentences, so she left a note for Annalise that said she was sick and left early. 

She went home, stripped off her green dress and turned the shower on.  The near-scalding water hurt, but it was the first thing she’d really felt since she figured out that she’d been nothing but a trophy to Annalise. She was a just a thing to be owned and used and discarded as her boss saw fit. She replayed the moment in her mind, scrubbing her skin until it blossomed into angry red welts.

Bonnie sat in the shower until the water ran cold, then she wrapped her hair in a towel and crawled into bed. She hid under her grandmother's patchwork quilt and cried until she fell asleep.

The next morning, Bonnie put on her spare set of cheap fake pearls like it was armor and forced herself to go to work. From then on, she did her best to fade into the background any time she and Sam were in the same room. She skipped their next session. When he asked why, she said she thought she’d gotten as far as she could with therapy for now. 

The shift in the way Annalise treated her was gradual, but Bonnie noticed. Her boss was more critical of her and blamed her for things that were no one’s fault. There was no replacement necklace and no “next time.” The wall between them grew until what they’d shared seemed like a figment of her imagination. 

Bonnie sometimes thought she was crazy, but there was a single pearl in her desk that she could roll between her fingers if she needed proof it had happened. 

At the very least, the sex had happened, but her perception of it and Annalise’s intent were worlds apart. She’d imagined that she was treasured, loved. She knew Annalise wouldn’t choose her over Sam. She would have been content to occupy the tiniest corner of the other woman’s heart, if it had been offered. She could have been happy with that. 

Bonnie tried to put it all out of her mind. On good days, she could ignore the guilt and anger that gnawed at her. On bad ones, the ones when Annalise was especially cruel to her, she locked herself in the hall bathroom and cried in private. 

On one of those days, Sam was waiting for her when she got back to her desk. 

“Annie had to go out. Emergency with a client,” he said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, sitting down and directing her attention to the case she was preparing, but Sam lingered, drifting over to stand behind her. He reached over her shoulder and carefully placed another of her pearls on top of a folder. 

“Case sounded bad. She’s going to be gone til’ late.” 

“I have a lot to do tonight.” 

“You can take a break. Does she really deserve your devotion?” Sam asked quietly.

She didn’t, but Bonnie wasn’t sure Annalise deserved her betrayal either. But the earlier cruelty was still sharp in her gut, so she let Sam lead her upstairs, even though his touch didn’t soothe her wounds.

From that point on, it became a routine. Annalise would be in New York consulting on a case, or at the jail bailing a client out, or out fucking someone who wasn’t either of them, and Sam would appear at Bonnie’s office door. He’d drop one of those damned glass pearls on her desk like he was cashing in a casino chip, and then he’d fuck her. 

Sometimes it happened upstairs in the bed with sheets that smelled like Annalise. Other times, it was a brief tryst in her office. Always it was careful and slow, with little variation in position. Sometimes he went down on her, but he never expected Bonnie to reciprocate. (She wasn’t sure if she would have if he’d asked, but he didn’t, and so she was able to stay passive in her betrayal of Annalise.)

Bonnie sometimes wished that he wouldn’t be so gentle with her. It made it obvious how broken he thought she was. Often it reminded her of the very different way Annalise had touched her. 

Even though that touch had been a lie, at least it was one with passion in it. 

Afterward, she’d add the newest pearl to the small box she kept in the back corner of her second desk drawer. She knew the pearls didn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t magically stop after Sam had returned them all to her, but part of Bonnie wanted to believe that the situation was finite. 

Another part of her wasn’t sure she wanted it to stop at all. She didn’t want to look too closely at that part, so she quieted it with bourbon on the rocks.

Sometimes it was months in between their encounters; other times Sam would want her two or three times in a week. Bonnie didn’t think she would have chosen this, but she accepted it. He wasn’t a selfish lover and said he wanted her to enjoy their encounters. (Sometimes she even came, but those orgasms were nothing compared to what she’d felt with Annalise.)

Her period was late after pearl number 19. As Bonnie sat on her bathroom floor with the test in her hand, she prayed for mercy. 

She’d spent half her life praying to someone who wasn’t listening, and this time was no exception. 

When the two pink lines appeared, it took her less time to make a decision than it had taken her to say “yes” when Annalise asked to kiss her. 

She wore her spare fake pearls for strength the morning she drove to the clinic. Later that day she was back at her desk, pale but resolute, bent over a brief when Annalise appeared to berate her for a mistake. She took it silently, like always, but Annalise could read her like no one else could. 

“Is something wrong?” she asked, like Bonnie was a person with feelings that mattered. 

She almost cracked then, almost, but she held it together. “I haven’t been feeling well. There’s something going around.” 

Annalise moved into her personal space, the back of a hand touching her forehead gently. “Well, you don’t have a fever,” she said quietly as she tucked a few locks of strawberry blonde hair behind one of Bonnie’s ears. She pressed her lips to Bonnie’s forehead. “You can go home if you’d like. Rest up.” She drifted lower, kissing a pale cheek. 

Bonnie froze, unsure what was expected of her. It seemed to be the wrong reaction, because Annalise pulled away and said, “But you do have a lot of work to do” before disappearing into her own office. 

After that, Bonnie started keeping condoms in her desk, and she insisted that Sam use them. If he wondered about the reason for her sudden vehemence, he didn’t ask. 

She hated that protecting herself meant taking an active role in what they were doing, as if she’d chosen the affair. (But she had chosen this, hadn’t she? She’d asked him to kiss her. If a jury heard their conversation they’d convict her without a second’s hesitation.) 

She was somewhat relieved that Sam came to her less frequently after that. She heard him fighting with Annalise and guessed he’d taken a mistress. (A real mistress. Bonnie didn’t consider herself anything of the sort.)

One night the argument was particularly vicious. Bonnie heard glass breaking and she stood at the foot of the stairs, wondering if she should try to intervene but knowing it was not her place to do so. 

An enraged Annalise came barreling down the steps, dragging a suitcase. She glared at Bonnie as she passed, then whirled and trained those piercing brown eyes on her.

“You worthless piece of shit,” she snarled and even though Bonnie had no idea what she’d done, she had to fight the impulse to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness. “I’m not paying you to eavesdrop on me.” 

Bonnie stammered out an apology, but then the door slammed and the other woman was gone. 

“Whatever she said, she didn’t mean it.” Sam appeared at the top landing, a full highball glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. “She’s pissed at me. You’re just collateral damage.”

“Or the spoils of war.”

He didn’t disagree with her, but he did get a second glass from the kitchen. He poured it for her and they sat on the couch together, drinking in silence. 

“Did she make the first move, or did you?” he asked in a voice that was strained and small. Bonnie drained her glass and held it out for him to refill. 

“She asked if she could kiss me and I said yes.”

“Are you in love with her?” 

“Why would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know. It’s obvious.” The way Sam’s eyes bored into her reminded Bonnie of the hours she’d spent sitting in a chair opposite him, telling him the most intimate details of her life. She’d done her best to forget that version of them, who they were to each other before everything went to hell, but the parallels were too strong to ignore. 

“It’s complicated,” she said, and he laughed sadly. 

“Isn’t everything, with Annie?” 

“Yes.”

“Could you ever be in love with me?” Sam asked quietly, and when Bonnie looked at him, she saw a person, a man desperate for escape, one who was as caught up in Annalise as she was. 

“I don’t know,” she said, looking for the answer in the bottom of her glass. Sam sighed and reached out toward her.

“Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

Bonnie extended her hand. Sam turned it and gently placed a pearl in the center of her palm. 

“That’s the last one.”

Bonnie stared at the tiny sphere in her hand, wide eyes fixed on it as she rolled it between her fingers. “I didn’t think it would stop when you ran out of pearls.”

“She said with dread, rather than the affection he’d hoped for.”

“Sam… you’ve got her. I don’t understand why you’d want anyone else, especially not—“

“She’s an addiction, Bonnie. Maybe for both of us. You’re softer. Gentle. With you, I feel like a human.” Sam must have noticed the guilt on her face, because he rushed to add, “A shitty human, maybe, but it’s better than feeling like her dog.”

“You’re not the one she kicks when she’s angry.”

“Not always.” 

“Why don’t you leave her?” Bonnie studied Sam’s face. In strange ways, they were similar. They’d both learned to wear masks to protect themselves. She wondered who’d taught Sam that he needed one and what lay underneath it. 

“Why don’t you?” He chuckled as she reached for the bottle for another refill instead of answering. “Exactly. You can’t. I can’t. We’re both trapped here, until we die or go crazy.”

“We’re already crazy.”

“Yeah. I guess until we die then.”

“I should hate her,” Bonnie said a few minutes later, breaking the silence that had fallen. “But I can’t.” 

Sam nodded. “Why do you think that is?”

“Stop that. You’re not my therapist anymore.”

“Okay. What am I then?”

Bonnie laughed bitterly. “Don’t ask me that.”

“Why not?” Sam shifted in his seat, his eyes never leaving her. “Lots of answers. I’ll start. I’m the jerk who’s married but can’t stop sleeping with you. Your turn.”

Bonnie shrugged. “You’re my boss’s husband.”

“I’m the man who’s kept all of your secrets.” 

“I don’t know that I believe that.” She studied him, stared hard, as if the lie would somehow show on his face. “You’re the one who has what I want.”

“Take it, then. Tell her.”

“Tell her that I was stupid enough to think that she actually wanted me? That I was more than a power play?” Bonnie’s voice took on an edge. “Tell her that because I let her fuck me once I’ve had to let you do it for years?”

Sam ignored the arrow fired across his bow. “Tell her that you love her.”

“So she can rip my heart out again.”

“Maybe. But it must be better than this limbo, right?”

Bonnie thought about it for a moment. “You were my therapist. I told you every horrible thing that happened to me. How did you get from that to seeing me as a woman that you wanted?”

“Honestly? It’s fucked up, Bon. I wanted you to know that men can be gentle, considerate lovers. I wanted to try to fix some of…” Sam opened his mouth to continue, closed it again. He shrugged helplessly. “As a therapist, I know that what I did was unethical. Wrong. But as a man, I was so drawn to you. And after we lost the baby, Annie and I drifted apart. She did her grieving with you.” Sam looked past her, at a mantle that should have been filled with family photographs but instead had a few vases and a large candle. Bonnie followed his gaze and a rush of sadness went through her. 

“I was safe. She needed to be strong for you.” Bonnie stifled a bitter laugh. “Turns out I wasn’t so safe after all. For either of you.”

“That’s not true.” Sam reached out and caressed Bonnie’s cheek. She thought he might kiss her, but he simply touched her and then continued. “We were the ones who weren’t safe for you.” 

He was right and Bonnie knew it, but she tilted her head into his touch and closed her eyes. Later she’d blame the bourbon for the moment of weakness, but she knew what she was doing. 

“One last time?” Sam asked quietly. 

The clatter of pearls on the floor, but this time there was just one, the last one, clutched tightly in her hand. It would be so easy to relax her fingers and let it drop. Sam would lean in and kiss her. He’d be drunk enough to stop treating her like she was something fragile. Drunk enough to pull her panties down, bunch up her skirt and fuck her right there on the couch. 

She wondered if Annalise walking in on them would make it all even, or if it would just start the cycle going again. That this time it would be Annalise she owed a debt to. Annalise never treated her like she was made of glass. Annalise would order Bonnie to her knees, would use her without a thought to her feelings. (Of course she would, because wasn’t that what started this whole mess in the first place?) 

Bonnie opened her eyes.

“No.” 

“Okay.” He looked crestfallen and Bonnie wondered what else was on his mind. 

“I don’t regret it,” she said, even though that might have been a lie. “It’s just that if I have a choice, I don’t want to be that person anymore.” 

“If you… I’m sorry if you ever felt that you didn’t have a choice.” 

Bonnie placed her empty glass on the table, then stood. “It’s okay. Maybe fewer choices would be better for all of us. It seems like most of the time we make bad ones.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “You think she’ll be back in the morning?”

“Who knows with her.” 

“I’m going to work from home until she gets back.” Bonnie grabbed a few files from her desk. She could feel Sam’s eyes on her as she did so, but she didn’t look up. 

She opened her desk drawer and reached into it, pulling the small box of pearls from it. She started to add the last one to it, but stopped. Bonnie slipped the final pearl into an inside pocket of her bag, then dumped the rest of the loose pearls in the trash. 

She paused on her way out, looking back to where Sam sat on the couch. He’d poured another drink and was nursing it, staring ahead at nothing. Bonnie knew he was hurting, but it wasn’t her responsibility to save him. 

“Goodnight, Sam.” She didn’t wait for him to respond before slipping out the front door. 

It took Annalise more than a week to return, but Frank let Bonnie know, so the blonde was already at her desk hard at work when the other woman arrived. 

They didn’t discuss Annalise’s parting words to her, and that was fine with Bonnie. She didn’t need to get into it. 

“You have the briefs for the Collins trial?” Annalise asked. 

“They’re on your desk. Pre-trial motion for the Eckles case is there too.”

“Good.” Annalise walked toward her office. As she closed the door, she stuck her head back out. “Thank you, Bonnie.”

Bonnie wasn’t sure where the kind words had come from. She supposed that Annalise could be trying to keep her off balance. It felt good anyway. 

She turned her attention back to her work. As she read a case file, her fingers drifted up to absent-mindedly toy with her necklace. She’d had the jeweler hang the last pearl Sam had returned to her on a thin gold chain. 

Bonnie wasn’t exactly sure why she’d gone to the trouble. It might have been a memento of her night with Annalise. Perhaps she kept it as a reminder that all things come to an end. 

Or maybe it was a symbol of the moment she took control of her own fate, when Sam asked “One last time?” and she responded “No.”

Bonnie had real pearls now, ones she bought for herself when their fortunes improved. But she’d kept this one, the lone glass pearl rested there at the hollow of her throat, a piece of where she’d been. 

Half a year later, when she saw on the news that Sam’s body had been found, Bonnie thought of that single pearl on its chain, tucked into her jewelry box. She remembered him sitting on the couch, staring into his drink, and she almost felt sorry for him. The thought startled her, and she dropped the glass she was holding. The sympathy vanished as the glass shattered on the floor, shards flying in all directions.

Like a strand of broken pearls.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, prompts and constructive criticism are always always always welcome. Thanks for sticking with me, my few but faithful fellow Bonnie aficionados.


End file.
